The inappropriate use of antimicrobial agents and a lack of newly developed ones are the main contributors to the current antibiotic resistance crisis. The World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged that bacterial antibiotic resistance represents one of the biggest threats to global public health, increasing therapy costs and mortality rates in severe infections. The leading cause of nosocomial infections globally is primarily due to a league of gram-negative bacteria that readily develop antimicrobial resistance. They frequently cause severe disease and easily ‘escape’ the activity of antibiotics. However, many unanswered questions concerning the mechanisms of global dissemination and evolution patterns of these notorious epidemic multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacterial pathogens. Thus, the time is right now to arrange a Research Topic to present and highlight novel findings in this research field.
This Research Topic highlights advances in understanding antimicrobial resistance mechanisms at the molecular level and the transmission dynamics and developing new treatments for multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria. This Research Topic welcomes genomic epidemiological studies to explore the molecular basis of antimicrobial resistance and to discover the new channels of resistance transmission between humans, animals, and the environment to encapsulate the ‘One Health’ concept. Also, surveillance on both global and local scales focuses on both the transmission of bacteria and the genes and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) that confer antimicrobial resistance to the ‘last-resort antimicrobial agents’ heightened virulence is more than welcome. Finally, studies that attempt to identify new resistance mechanisms, explore newly discovered antimicrobial agents, and introduce new techniques and methods for rapid detection, characterization, and elimination of multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria would be very much appreciated.
Following the successful
Volume I and
Volume II, this Research Topic still encourages collecting original research articles, (mini)reviews, protocols, perspectives, and opinion articles that focus on the molecular basis of global dissemination and evolution of epidemic multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacterial pathogens of clinical importance. This Research Topic will present authoritative works that include, but are not limited to, the following themes:
• Unrevealing the development of antimicrobial resistance, the molecular epidemiology, and the transmission dynamics of the international multidrug-resistant high-risk clones by genomic epidemiological and spatial-temporal analysis.
• Developing novel antibiotics, alternative approaches, and emerging diagnostic strategies or methodologies (e.g., CRISPR/Cas or Nanomaterials) to combat antibiotic resistance.
• Development of new bioinformatic approaches that contribute to the enhancement of microbial pathogen diagnosis and antimicrobial resistance phenotypic prediction.
• Development of novel treatment strategies against severe multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections.
• Implementation of "One Health" strategies to mitigate antimicrobial resistance.